Pages

Pages

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Austroasiatic

Introduction
This language family is in Southeast Asia, India, and China.  It was created over 4,000 years ago.  It has 2 main branches and 169 languages.  It has different scripts 4 writing.   Millions people speak these languages.  It has its own phonological and grammatical characteristics.
History
These languages is spoken by over 60 million people!  Most Austroasiatic speakers may have common ancestors 10,000 years ago in China.  They have ancestry with Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Hmong-Mien people 35,000 years ago!!!  They are more distantly related to Melanesians and (native) Americans.  Sum of them moved into India 10,000 years ago.   
2 Stems and Many Flowers
The stems are Munda and Mon-Khmer.  Munda has 22 languages and they were influenced by Indo-Aryan languages.  Mon-Khmer has 147 languages and it was influenced by Chinese languages.  The most popular Mon-khmer languages are Vietnamese and Khmer.  Khmer is spoken in Cambodia.  Munda languages are spoken in India and Bangladesh.  Sum of those languages are endangered because they don't have a lot of speakers.  These languages have many dialects.     
Phonological Characteristics
These languages has many vowels, but most don't have tones.  Sum vowels are said differently.  Most words are one sound.  There are constants @ the end of words.  Mon-Khmer languages have a 2 constant syllable in the beginning of sum of their words.  The words of these languages are rhythmic.  The Khmer language has 36 vowels!!!
Grammatical Characteristics
Munda languages have a complex morphology and Vietnamese doesn't have one @ all!  Most Austroasiatic languages have infixes, affixes, and prefixes.  These languages also have expressives.  They describe sensory perceptions and emotions.
The sentence structure 4 Mon-Khmer languages is subject-verb-object.  The sentence structure 4 Munda languages is subject-object-verb, because it was influenced by Dravidian languages.  There is no word 4 be in these languages.

Sum of the vocabulary of these languages were borrowed from other languages.  Examples: Vietnamese borrowed words from Mandarin.  Mon from Sanskrit and Khmer from Pali.  A lot of the original vocabulary was lost.  But, I think the Munda retained most of it.           
Scripts
There are 4 main alphabets 4 this language family.  They are Khmer, Thai, Lao, and Burmese.  They are many minor alphabets as well.  The Vietnamese script is based on the ancient Chinese writing.  There have been alphabets created using the Latin alphabet.   

Speakers
The Munda live in India and Bangladesh.  They weave and create baskets.  There religion is Sarnaism; it has a creator and earth goddess.  The Sal tree and sacred groves are important.  They mixed Sarnaism with Hinduism.   
The Khmer tribe rule Cambodia.  They created the first written language of Austroasiatic language family.  Most of them follow Theravada Buddhism.  They believe they came from a Brahmin and a celestial nymph.  They created an empire and Angkor Wat.
Mon people have the same ancestors as the Khmer.  Most of them live in Myanmar.  They founded ancient civilizations in Thailand and Laos.  The British helped the Mon people defeat the Burmen monarchy.  They want their own country.  There script is based on "Indic scripts".  They do spiritual dances and play many different instruments.
Nicobarese live on 19 island off the coast of Bengal.  They have their own form of shamanism and they like Christianity.  There are 3 spheres of life: sky, earth, and sea.  They know everything has a spirit.
There are many other Austroasiatic people, but this will suffice.     

Conclusion
The Austroasiatic language family is over 4,000 years old!  It is spoken by many people.  It is composed of 2 branches: Munda and Khmer-Mon.  It is the only language family I know of with expressive.  The languages have been influenced by Indian and Chinese languages.  They have created their own scripts 4 writing.  There are many different types of Austroasiatic people and they all are amazing!!!!
References
https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/austro-asiatic-language-family/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austroasiatic_languages
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Austroasiatic-languages#ref74991
https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/austro-asiatic-language-family/
https://www.quora.com/Is-Sarnaism-different-from-Hinduism

No comments:

Post a Comment